By Jesse Jones — Even as wages inch upward across Bernalillo County, many residents still earn far less than what experts say it takes to cover basic needs like rent, food and child care.
New data from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s annual Living Wage Calculator shows a single adult needs $21.87 per hour to survive in the county without assistance, or $45,486 a year. That is nearly $10 more than the current $12 state minimum wage.
According to MIT, a living wage is what a full-time worker must earn to cover essentials such as housing and health care without outside help.
The gap grows for households with children. In a family with two working adults and two children, each parent must earn $27.17 an hour, totaling $113,047 a year just to meet basic expenses. Child care drives much of the expense, costing about $23,524 for two children — often more than housing. For a single parent with one child, the living wage jumps to $38.72 an hour.
What costs so much?
Housing and transportation also take a big share of income. A single adult spends about $11,735 a year on housing and $8,125 on transportation.
That means that many essential workers fall short. Health care support workers average $32,960 a year, and food preparation workers make about $33,800, leaving a living wage gap of over $11,000 annually for a single adult.
The data highlights the gap between the official federal poverty level and real-world costs. The federal poverty wage is about $7.67 an hour, far below what MIT estimates residents need to cover housing, transportation and other essentials in Bernalillo County.